"Yes, I can," she said, in a voice as bright and hard as the big diamond on her left ring finger. "And I have. The deed was executed and witnessed days ago. All I had to do was finalize it. My will has already been modified to reflect the change. Put a data-dime into your communicator, Asa, so I can send you the transcript."
"Give your shares to Eve," I pleaded. "Or to Dan and Beth. I don't want this."
I've run from it all my life...
"Eve, Dan, and Beth will inherit your father's stake and divide it equally, twelve and one-half percent for each of them. But none of them would carry out my wishes in regard to the charities. They simply don't believe that galactic Big Business is an abomination, as you and I do."
"But—"
"Do as I say, dear. The dime."
I took a microdisk from the little dispenser on the console and slipped it into the slot. A red telltale flashed on. Then it turned green. I felt a sick lump in my gut. This wasn't happening.
Katje leaned forward and kissed the com display. Kissed the image of my face. "I must go now, dear. I'm very tired and I suspect you are, too. We'll have a long talk when you get here. Please don't let anyone know about this until we've spoken. Especially not your father. I want to be there when you tell Simon yourself."
I had to smile. "Oh, Katje. You're a wicked old woman."
"Sleep tight, Asa." Her head tilted and a bemused expression came over her. "I don't usually rest too well myself. But I think I will, tonight."
The communicator went to blue.
I stumbled off to my cabin, took the medication prescribed by the Cravat doctor, and hibernated for fifty-one hours.
When I woke up, I went to the wardroom, unlocked it, removed the dime from the SS com, plugged it into my own notebook and called up the data.
It hadn't been a dream. I still owned one-quarter of Rampart Starcorp.
I had just finished eating an enormous breakfast after my long sleep, and was back in the wardroom preparing the equipment for the first stage of Ollie Schneider's interrogation, when the door chime sounded.
I unlocked the door. Mimo stood there. His Don Quixote face was somber. "May I come in? There's something I must tell you."
We sat down at the conference table. Whatever he had to say, it was bad. I braced myself.
"Helly, your sister Eve contacted us two days ago with some very sad news. About your mother."
An invisible monster took hold of my heart and squeezed. "Oh, no. Katje's dead, isn't she!"
"Yes. I'm very sorry, mi hijo. Eve called a few hours after you had retired. She told me not to waken you when I explained that you were under medication and desperately in need of rest. You'll want to call her for the particulars. Eve did tell me that your mother's death was peaceful, in her sleep."
Numbly, I thanked him.
"Matt wonders if you would prefer to postpone the questioning of Schneider."
"No. Give me an hour. Then ask her to join me. We'll carry on as planned."
He nodded and left the room.
I didn't weep; my tears tended to flow at odd, idiosyncratic times and not according to default emotional programming. I'd mourn Katje Vanderpost in my own way, when the time seemed right.
Operating on mental autopilot, with the reality of the situation accepted and yet held firmly at arm's length, I opened the locked SS communicator and placed a call to Eve, only to discover that for some reason she was not available. I couldn't bear the thought of speaking to Dan or Beth. My brother was an icy, methodical type who hadn't hesitated to call Katje a silly fool for resisting the trust arrangement. My younger sister, just the opposite in temperament, was very likely crushed by sorrow. That left only one other person for me to talk to...
It was barely morning in the high country of Arizona's Tonto Forest. He would rise early, as was his usual habit when in residence at the Sky Ranch, breakfasting before dawn so he could take a good long horseback ride before the intense summer heat cooked the resin out of the ponderosa pine needles and drove the birds and animals of the plateau into hiding.
The ranch manager said he would transfer my SS call to a vidphone out in the barn, where my father was saddling his horse himself. When I asked if the InSec bodyguards were with Simon, the manager told me that the boss adamantly refused to have company on the dawn ride, insisting on being alone so he could "think." The security people were ordered to follow at a distance as best they could, some mounted and the others riding in a Land Rover.
Simon picked up and gave me a curt greeting. "Hello, Asa. I was wondering when you'd get around to calling. Where the hell are you?"
He was wearing a sweat-stained Resistol straw hat with a silver band and a light cotton shirt. The relayed image was none too clear, but I could discern that his crumpled, unshaven face bore the unmistakable patina of a monumental bender. Simon also had his own way of grieving.
"I'm on my way home," I said. "We're about six days out after refueling at Tillinghast Starbase. I just now heard about Katje."
"Yeah." His gaze intensified as he came closer to the wall-mounted video pickup. "Just what did you hear?"
"Only that she'd died in her sleep. Eve left a message with Mimo a couple of days ago. I've been totally zoned out. Recovering from the Oliver Schneider retrieval."
"Uh—Eve told me about that. Good work. I never expected—I mean, when you went back to Kedge-Lockaby I thought..."
I knew what he'd thought. But my flaws weren't at issue. "Katje. Was it her heart?"
"No." He lifted his head, and I realized that his green eyes were inflamed more with fury than with sorrow. "It was murder."
"Jesus Christ! How?"
"A cup of tea poisoned with sephrosamine, an exotic compound that leaves no trace in the body. But our Internal Security people found the goddamn used tea bag right there in Katje's kitchen."
"Do they have a suspect?"
"Yes and no. That old housekeeper of hers, Concha Cis-neros, left a note before taking a swan dive off the penthouse balcony. Said 'the man' told her the tea would be harmless, that she'd never meant to hurt Katje, that poor Freddy wasn't to blame."
"Freddy? Who the fuck is Freddy?"
"InSec pieced it together. Seems the housekeeper has a grandson, a priest, who was a bit of a chickenhawk. Got therapy, then fell off the wagon. Whoever 'the man' is, he threatened to blow the whistle on pedophilic Father Freddy unless Concha served the tea."
"Alistair Drummond! That filthy bastard has to be responsible. He wanted Mom's quarterstake to go to the Reversionists."
Simon's red-rimmed optics stared at me without blinking. "And now it has. But there's nothing to implicate the Insap-lovers or Galapharma in Katje's killing. Nothing at all."
"Probably not." I took a ragged breath. "But it won't save Drummond's slimy hide. I'll skin him alive for this."
Simon uttered an ungodly chuckle. "We'll see which of us gets to him first with the Buck knife."
"Have—have you thought about funeral arrangements yet?"
He shook his head with a sheepish air. "Tell the truth, I don't know what she would have wanted. Dan's going to Phoenix later this morning. He'll see that lawyer of Katje's about her will—what's his name? Geraldo Gonzalez. If she didn't specify, we'll do a cremation and scatter her ashes on the Sky Ranch. If you like, we can hold off the services until you get here."
"No," I decided. "It's not necessary. You just go ahead."
I knew what kind of memorial my mother really would have wanted, and it had nothing to do with preachers and flowers and bone dust blowing in the mountain wind. She wanted justice for the human-exploited indigenous peoples of the galaxy, an impossible dream.
Or was it?
My own youthful ideals in that direction, long since submerged in disillusion and misfortune, gave a wan flicker. Chief Divisional Inspector A. E. Frost had seen his noble ambitions ruthlessly crushed, and Helmut Icicle was too mired in self-pity to care about abused aliens. But Asahel Frost, quarterstakeholder in an Amalgamated Concern, j
ust might be able to make a difference...
The feeble spark flared mischievously, just for an instant, then subsided back into dormancy. Speculation along those lines was not only premature, it was damn near laughable.
Shows what I knew.
"About Katje's will," Simon was saying. "This Gonzalez fella is a notorious Reversion Party activist. She probably made him trustee for all the groups inheriting her shares. According to Starcorp bylaws, the quarterstake trustee gets an automatic seat on the board and can demand an immediate meeting. Dan and Zed are champin' at the bit, all eager for it, damn their eyes. They just want the hassle over and done with."
"Simon, that's not—"
But he barged ahead with his scenario of corporate doom.
"Gonzalez'll call for a vote on the merger and say 'Aye.' Thora Scranton will join him, voting the Small Stakeholders' twenty-five percent. If Emma Bradbury votes along with them—which I think is most likely—Gala flat-out rakes in the pot. If Emma defies Zed and throws her twelve-point-five in with me, we end up with a fifty-fifty stalemate and I have to poll the other board members. You know what that'll mean! Votes against Galapharma: Emma, Gunter, and Eve. Votes in favor: Zed, Dunne, Rivello, Scranton, Beth, Dan, and Gonzalez. Six-four Galapharma—and adios, muchachos"
He finally ran out of steam, giving me the chance to say, "Wrong!"
"That's the way it'll be," he said gruffly.
"No it won't, Pop." And I told him why, watching the blotchy color drain from his ravaged face and his mouth fall open in shock and disbelief.
"An unencumbered gift? To you! My sweet Lord! How— how could she?"
Poor old Simon Frost didn't know whether to shit or go blind. His chagrin was almost laughable. Rescued by the scapegrace son and bent cop!
Twice over, actually.
He finally mumbled, inanely, "Don't tell me you're gonna hand over the stake earnings to that gang of xeno-hugging kooks! If you reinvested it in Rampart—"
"The financial aspect is none of your damn business," I snapped. "The only thing that concerns you is my vote. Me plus you plus Emma equals a winning combo. Even if Emma backs out, you and I still have the 62.5 to flatten the opposition."
"Yes." I could barely hear his voice, and he'd lowered his head so that his face was deeply shadowed by the brim of his beat-up hat. Then he looked full at me, the impact of my words finally coming home to him. "Yes, by God! Yes!"
"There's only one way Drummond can salvage the situation now," I warned. "By eliminating you."
"Let the cocksuckin' pencil-dick sidewinder try!" Raging green eyes that were identical to my own blazed like those of a catamount caught by a jacklight.
"He will, Simon. Count on it. Unless you want to change your own will. Pass your entire stake on to Eve, rather than dividing it among her and Dan and Beth."
"Wouldn't be fair," he growled. "Especially now that you got yours."
Oh, boy. "Well, at least start thinking more seriously about your own safety. Lay off the solitary morning rides—for the next six days, anyhow, until I get to Earth and we torpedo the takeover. Eve and I have decided Rampart should file the civil suit immediately, as soon as Schneider's evidence is validated. I want you there in Toronto when we march into the Judiciary Tribunal."
"Dammit-all, Asa, I don't need the likes of you giving me orders!"
"You listen to me and listen good, you old fool! I just about died on Dagasatt collecting Ollie Schneider for you. And I sure as hell didn't risk my neck and get a bunch of other people killed just so a mule-headed old fart could screw things up through his own idiot carelessness. You want to see Alistair Drummond get what's coming to him, you better do what I fuckin' well tell you to do!"
"Huh." A grin broke over his face like sunrise over the Sierra Ancha. "Really think you're hot shit, don't you."
"Lukewarm, anyhow." I cut off the subspace communicator.
Matt and I interrogated Oliver Schneider for only three hours in the initial session, working him so gently that his vital signs almost never registered above the normal range.
The first important question I asked produced a disappointing result. Schneider could not say with certainty whether a member of the Frost family, or one of the Rampart Board of Directors, was secretly in league with Galapharma.
If such a person did exist, Schneider was inclined to put Zared Frost at the top of the list of suspects. Cousin Zed had hired Schneider and encouraged his sweeping reorganization of the Security Department inherited from Karl Nazarian. Zed made no bones about his admiration of Ollie's abilities. He'd rubber-stamped dubious changes in security protocols that gave InSec wider access to sensitive financial and legal material that would ordinarily have been outside the purlieu of that department, changes that had eased theft of data by Schneider's moles and pinpointed field operations vulnerable to sabotage. Zed had also defended the security chief's innocence right up until the moment Ollie and his buddies had flown the coop.
But did Schneider have any positive evidence linking Zed to Galapharma? Not really. My cousin's actions could be ascribed just as easily to naivete and misplaced trust as to malice.
The next question I asked Oliver Schneider was, "Are you a Haluk demiclone?"
He burst out laughing. He said, "Abso-fucking-lutely ho!"
The machines indicated he told the truth.
With that out of the way, we simply told him to relate his involvement with Galapharma from the beginning, in as much detail as he could remember. He complied with hardly any prompting from us.
Schneider had been tentatively approached by Quillan McGrath, alias Bronson Elgar, in 2228, around about the same time that I was being set up to take a fall in the ICS. He was able to tell me positively that my frame-up was personally engineered by Tyler Baldwin, Alistair Drummond's head of security, in order to get me out of the picture before the active takeover attempt began. They feared, quite rightly, that I might use my high position in the Enforcement Division of the Interstellar Commerce Secretariat to sniff out a conspiracy aimed at the family Starcorp. Drummond had ordered me killed outright; it was Baldwin who convinced the Gala CEO that my spectacular disgrace would better serve the cause by doing a mindfuck on my father and softening him up for the multipronged takeover assault.
Shortly after I was convicted, Oliver Schneider was hooked and reeled in by Baldwin, agreeing to become a key player in the conspiracy to devalue Rampart. Among other things, he arranged for the murder of Yaoshuang Qiu, a key executive, hatched sabotage schemes, fomented Insap insurrections on Rampart worlds, and engineered the pernicious manipulation of data. Ollie's compensation for the chicanery was a substantial wad of Galapharma stock, plus a humongous amount of cash deposited to a secret account on Saraia-Beta, the notorious freesoil haven for dirty money.
Being nobody's fool, Schneider took out his insurance policy as soon as he entered Gala's covert employ. He prepared two duplicate packets of incriminating materials, including holovids of McGrath and Baldwin made secretly during the recruiting sessions, sealed them, and deposited them with a venerable Toronto law firm of irreproachable character. One of the firm's senior partners, Jaswinder Singh, had gone to McGill University with Schneider and they had shared many an undergraduate romp. Details of these long-ago escapades, narrated by Ollie at unfailing intervals of four weeks while his friend checked his voice with a stress-indicator, formed the simple "code" ensuring that one sealed packet remained in the law firm's vault, and the other in a safe deposit box in Singh's bank. According to Schneider's instructions, if he failed to call Singh and relate a genuine anecdote—or if his voice pattern indicated that the communication was made under duress—the packets were to be hand-delivered to ICS Enforcement and the Chief Prosecutor of the Commonwealth Judiciary. The same procedure was to be followed in the event of Schneider's death, from any cause. Naturally, Singh, the guarantor of the insurance policy, received a handsome emolument.
The next insurance call to him was due in three days. I decided
to let Ollie make it in advance. It would be disastrous to my corporate strategy to have Schneider's incriminating balloon go up ahead of schedule, and I was already feeling leery about what we might encounter when we approached Tomgat.
Further gleanings from Schneider's excellent memory: After my sister Eve was rescued from her kidnappers, Karl Nazarian's sleuthing fingered Ollie and four of his close associates in Rampart Security as traitors. They fled Seriphos and requested asylum from the Galapharma resident agent on the Haluk planet Artiuk. By that time Elgar/McGrath was deceased, thanks to me, and his position assumed by Erik Skogstad.
Skogstad psychoprobed the fugitive Ollie with exceptional rigor—"Reamed me out like a Halloween pumpkin!"— and learned about the insurance policy. Unfortunately for Galapharma, the Toronto law firm's vault proved to be impregnable—as did the safe deposit box—and Jaswinder Singh was too politically connected to be coerced and too straitlaced to be bribed.
So Schneider was permitted to live, at least until the contents of his dangerous packets became irrelevant and immaterial to any civil action against Galapharma Amalgamated Concern by Rampart.
Connected to our psychotronic machines, Oliver Schneider readily agreed to hand over the packets of evidence to us, provided that Rampart's CEO reiterated my promise of immunity in the presence of his solicitor friend.
I told him that Eve would be delighted to do so. It was arranged that Ollie would call Jaswinder Singh on the SS com immediately, and make an appointment to meet him at his office upon our arrival in Toronto. Singh, the evidence packets, and Ollie would then proceed with me and my party to Rampart Tower. Shortly after that, Eve, Simon, Dan, and I would draw a legal line in the sand, and invite Alistair Drummond and Galapharma to a Shootout at the Rampart corral.
When Matt and I concluded the first interrogation session— and the subspace call to Singh was accomplished—we escorted the prisoner back to the brig. He was suffering only a minimal amount of reactionary discomfort. We planned to limit Schneider's questioning to three easy hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. With six days remaining of the trip to Earth, we figured we had ample time to drain his brain of anything relevant.